Dan-
Like you, Jonathan, and Brian, I too am a hunter. I was not raised a hunter, but instead chose to pursue the activity of hunting pheasants in my late teens. I’m a decent instinct shot at trap, but was rather unsuccessful in my pursuits of fowl, mostly because of lack of habitat, and so the activity of hunting was dismissed.
Fast-forward 10 years: It came to me one day while hiking; I had come across an animal that was apparently the unfortunate prey of a larger predator, I realized that although I am part of the food chain, I am rather detached out of convenience. I spoke to a friend of mine about it who like me is an analytical-type, and after some discussion, we both agreed that it would be good to go hunt, kill, and eat an animal; deer is what we would pursue.
The first year that we tried it, we went into the woods with guns and purpose. Neither of us had hunted game before, and neither of us knew anyone who ever had (we were both from urban areas, he in the east, and myself in the west). We had read up about how to hunt, what to do, how to track, and how/where to shoot to make it a clean kill. We had both spent many hours practicing, and had a god tight spread from a respectable distance.
We went out almost daily, and neither one of took a shot at any animals. He said that he hadn’t seen any, and I said the same. However, both of us were lying, and the following summer we each realized that both had had animals lined up in our crosshairs, yet neither of us took the shot.
So what gives? We had the opportunity, why not take the shot? For me, it came down to my tools. For some reason I just couldn’t bring myself to shoot a bullet at some deer wandering around minding its own business and eating some roughage. It was the gun, I didn’t feel right about it, it was like it was somehow an unfair advantage.
I decided that a bow would be a better tool to level the playing field, since the arrow is a much closer range tool that requires a much greater deal of predatory skill. In other words, the deer had a better chance.
A deer was eventually taken, and it was a very powerful moment for me. I was deeply moved in a way that was inexplicable. I had taken the life of an animal with the intention of using its flesh to nourish my life. I became connected to the animal in a much more profound way than I had anticipated. I thanked the animal for its life, and very little of its body was discarded, and my partner Yvonne even tanned the hide.
This was an experiment for me. I had felt that in the past I was disconnected to what I put into my body. When I went to the grocer, I would buy pork, steaks, chicken, … whatever, but it was simply a ‘meat product’.
I like to spend time in nature, and I very much like to be a part of, and interact with nature. I’m not fond of killing animals, and I have no plans to hunt again in the near future. I will say though that there is now a meaning to the food that I ingest that had never existed in the past, and I am very happy that this feeling exists within myself.
We are humans, and part of being humans is the feelings that we experience. I truly believe that each person out there should experience what it is like to take the life of an animal, and then consume it. Without doing this, one cannot fully understand what it means to be a predator, nor could one appreciate that little styrofoam and saran-wrapped package in the butchers isle of their local grocer.
Dan, killing an animal can produce a pretty lousy feeling in one’s self, and there is no reason whatsoever that you should be ashamed of feeling that way- you are taking the innocent life of another being. Brain raises a good point; that you may consider raising the difficulty level of the hunt. This worked for me through bow hunting, and it may work out for you as well. Either way, I do believe that killing an animal in any way has an effect on one’s emotions, and each of us will experience that in a different way.
:camping: